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 Officer Brian Moore, 25, was in an unmarked car pursuing Demetrius
Blackwell, who was wanted on a weapons charge, when he was shot
during the weekend in a residential neighborhood in the New York
City borough of Queens, police said.
Bratton said the Queens district attorney on Tuesday would seek a
first-degree murder indictment against Blackwell, 35, who was being
held without bail on attempted murder, assault, weapons possession
and other charges.
The shooting in New York comes amid months of mounting tensions
after a series of unarmed black men died at the hands of police
officers, the most recent in Baltimore where six officers were
charged on Friday in the death of Freddie Gray.
Moore is the first New York City officer killed in the line of duty
since two uniformed officers were ambushed last December. He was the
fifth city officer shot in five months.
 Bratton, speaking at a press conference late Monday, was asked for
his perspective on the violence against NYPD officers amid
nationwide protests over accusations of police brutality.
"You'd have to almost go back to the late 60s to early 70s to see a
time when there was so much anti-police sentiment in the country,"
Bratton said.
"These are strange times," Bratton said.
Moore and his partner had been trying to question Blackwell, who has
an extensive criminal background, after they saw him seeming to
adjust an object in his waistband, police said.
Police said Blackwell pulled out a gun and fired into the vehicle,
striking Moore.
The weapon, which was later recovered, had been stolen in Georgia in
2011, Bratton said.
Moore, who came from a family of police officers, joined the New
York City Police Department in July 2010, according to Mayor Bill de
Blasio. He lived in the suburban Long Island town of Massapequa.
Uniformed officers who had kept vigil outside Jamaica Hospital in
Queens saluted as Moore's body was taken away in an ambulance.
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"The people of this great city should take pause this afternoon just
to recognize the life of a brave young man who took an oath 4-1/2
years ago to keep the people of this city safe," said Police Chief
of Department James O’Neill, who worked with Moore’s father on the
police force.
"That's what he was doing when he was brutally murdered just a few
short days ago," O'Neill said.
The mayor, in a statement, expressed his sympathies.
"Our hearts are heavy today," he said. "Brian served with
distinction and he put his life on the line each day to keep us all
safe."
Unlike the shooting in Brooklyn days before Christmas of Officers
Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were targeted for being in
uniform, Moore was in plainclothes and in an unmarked car,
authorities said.
Two New York plainclothes officers were shot while responding to an
armed robbery in the Bronx in January and survived their injuries.
(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg and Laila Kearney; Editing
by Will Dunham, Peter Cooney, Toni Reinhold and Ken Wills)
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